Within his bending sickle's compass come (f) 11. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks(e) 10. Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.(d) 9. It is the star to every wandering bark,(c) 8. That looks on tempests and is never shaken (d) 7. Or bends with the remover to remove:(b) 5. Which alters when it alteration finds,(a) 4. Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a) 2. I have divided the following sonnet into the three quatrains.ġ1 Sonnet 116 1. A sonnet it is a poetic form that has a certain structure as well as a rhyming pattern.ĩ Rhyming patterns The Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains followed by a couplet, the scheme being: abab cdcd efef gg.ġ0 Quatrain? Quatrains are four line stanzas of any kind Well, there are three syllables (separate sounds) in the word syllable! “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.” How many syllables are there in that quotation?Ĩ Back to sonnets. An Example of Pentameter from Shakespeare: but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS

Meter is really the pattern So, there are five iambs per line! (Iambic penta meter )Ħ It is percussive and attractive to the ear and has an effect on the listener's central nervous system. It is the first and last sound we ever hear, it is the rhythm of the human heart beat.ĥ Pentameter? An ‘iamb’ is ‘dee Dum’ – it is the heart beat. It consists of a line of five iambic feet, ten syllables with five unstressed and five stressed syllables.

Quite simply, it sounds like this: dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM. 1 Shakespearean Sonnet Structure: Rhythm, Meter and RhymeĢ What is a sonnet? A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter.ģ Iambic Pentameter Iambic Pentameter is the rhythm and meter in which poets and playwrights wrote in Elizabethan England.Ĥ Heartbeat.

Sonnet 116 iambic pentameter